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At the 2017 parliamentary elections, attempts were made to influence voter participation by means of SMS, letters and telephone conversations.

Voter Mobilisation in a High-Turnout Context: Get Out the Vote Experiments in the 2017 Norwegian Parliamentary Election, by Bergh, Johannes; Christensen, Dag Arne; Matland, Richard

What can be done to increase voter participation in elections? One possibility is to contact voters individually and try to get them to the polls.

This report contains results from several experiments with “Get Out the Vote” mobilisation techniques in the Norwegian local elections of 2015 and the parliamentary election of 2017. Link to the project.

In 2015, the researchers Johannes Berg, Dag Arne Christensen and Richard Matland performed an experiment with sending reminders to low-turnout groups via SMS and letter. Then the number of voters increased among all groups - and the increase was highest in the newly arrived immigrants group, by 5.8 percentage points.

These experiments include letters in the post, SMS text messages and phone calls to voters.

The general finding is that mobilisation drives such as these are more effective in local elections where turnout is lower than in parliamentary elections.

SMS text messages and letters in the post can be quite effective in mobilising low-turnout groups, such as immigrants and young voters in local elections.